


arachnid para-social

by thenewdarling



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewdarling/pseuds/thenewdarling
Summary: After Peter Parker’s death, he is mourned by a city who didn’t know him
Kudos: 9
Collections: Spider-Man Public Identity Reveal





	arachnid para-social

The thing about a dangerous job is that any day could be your last. Particularly when that job habitually involves swinging from buildings.

For this reason, from a number of close calls, Peter Parker has learned the hard way. If you are sick, you stay home. If you are injured, you stay home. An compromised Spider-Man does more harm than good. And sure, if Peter Parker goes to work sick, the worst case scenario is him giving the entire Daily Bugle the flu. If Spider-Man goes to work sick, he may not come home at all. And New York needs Spider-Man.

At the end of the day though, it's just risk management. And Peter Parker's final day on this earth was unfairly average.

#

It's around one pm. Rush hour, the schools seem to be letting out. And five teenagers are trying to break into a car.

It's a classic premise. One he's been doing with his eyes closed for years.

He lowers himself down to street level slowly, in de-escalation mode. "Let me guess," he says, putting on The Voice, and projecting so they can hear him. When they turn to look, he says, "Lost your keys."

One of them takes an opportunistic swing.

_Spider-Sense. Dodge left. Dodge right._

"He-he-hey!" Peter says, hands up. "Chill compadres. Do kids still say 'compadres' these days?"

_Spider-Sense. Dodge down._

"Ok, clearly the strong silent types..." He webs the one with the trigger-happy right hook to the wall. "Now listen, I-"

_Spider-Sense. Dodge left. Counter, judo flip. Web him down. Behind you. Backwards somersault. Roundhouse kick. Spider-Sense. Number four's escaping. Web yank. But where's number fi—_

The sixth sense tingle has just started to kick in a little slow that time, and for whatever reason, the baseball bat of number five manages to collide with his head.

_Head spinning. Spider-Sense going crazy. Need to get out, jump—!_

He jumps, but his balance is fucked now. He flies forward, headlong into the Dumpster, banging his head again. Number five doesn't let up, wailing on him with the baseball bat, and it's quicker than he can react now—

"Wait! Kid, hold u—" Peter says, before coughing blood. But the kid doesn't stop. Crazed with fear. 

And the last thing Peter Parker sees on this earth is looking up at some snot-nosed teenager who's looking down, realising what he's done. "Oh my God, I killed Spider-Man..."

And then the darkness takes him.

#

It didn't take long for his secret identity to get out, with only a corpse left to protect it. And then it started, as he'd always feared.

The trawling through his personal history, his sexual history, his family. His address. The misgendering. And Mary-Jane just broke down. Couldn't see five feet in front of her anymore, it was like she was a husk. Too grief-stricken to do anything but wail.

And the fan letters kept coming. The overwhelming pouring of tweets and emails and physical letters of the lives he'd saved and the people who were indebted to him. Who felt the loss of Spider-Man as keenly as she did, or so they said.

She lifted the red mask off the kitchen table, relatively untouched from the last time he'd patched it up a month ago. "What are we going to do without you..."

Mayor Jameson had called for today to be marked a public holiday. She couldn't work out whether it was because he was happy or sad. She knew she wanted to clock him one though, and probably would if he turned up at her door like he was threatening to.

Gwen had been round. And Harry. Oh Harry. If there was someone who would take it even worse than her, it might be him.

"It doesn't feel real," she had said, to Dr Connors. Or was it Robbie Robertson. The days were blending together, shambling onwards from one to the next. "I keep going to pick up the phone, and then remembering all over again. I try to remember what the last thing I said to him was... but there's nothing there. It was just... normal."

Harry was sleeping on her couch. 'In case she needed anything.' And her family had finally crawled out of the woodwork after all those years. And oh, did they have words that she didn't want to hear.

And it was just, everything was wrong. Everyone knew Peter's secret now. And he had no opinion about it. Because he was gone.

He was gone.

He was gone.


End file.
